Remember when Ludwig announced that he was partnering with the Supernova series? He said he wants this to be the biggest Melee major of all-time; a title that Ludwig himself technically holds in the online format. For that reason alone, I think this year’s Supernova is worth paying attention to. In fact, as of when I wrote this, it currently stands at just 2260 entrants. This would make Supernova 2025 the biggest in-person Melee tournament since Evo 2016 (2372). I believe there’s still more time until registration ends too, so that number could be even higher by the time this is published.
In this column, I’ve taken a journey through the history of the Supernova. More specifically, I’m going to do so through the lens of what I focused on last week: measuring the greatest upsets in Supernova history.
Disclaimer
If you’re interested in my methodology breakdown, read last week’s piece. The long story short: Upset Factor measures the normalized difference between expected placements by seed, “PNR” measures the normalized difference between the ranking ranges of two given players, and incremental adjustments are made for players that have significant head-to-head history.
For example, BING defeating Cody Schwab has an Upset Factor of 11 between the 64 seed and 1 seed of GOML X. It also has a PNR of 6, which is the difference between a notable unranked player with regional standing and a Top 5 player. UpsetScore is the averaged Z-Score of normalized Z-Scores for Upset Factor, PNR, and H2H adjustments. As you read it in this column, consider it a stand-in value for how many standard deviations away from the typical Supernova upset gathered within my sample of 91 notable upsets.
First Honorable Mentions
| Major | Result | Upset Factor | PNR | UpsetScore |
| Super Smash Con 2016 | Cyrain over Nintendude | 5 | 3 | 1.48 |
| Super Smash Con | lloD over ChuDat | 5 | 3 | 1.48 |
Both of these upsets are very interesting to see here. Each of them feature MD/VA players that had a history of defeating the higher ranked player within the same region, like when lloD beat ChuDat at the 2015 MD/VA invitational or when Cyrain took a set from Nintendude at a Xanadu monthly in 2013. In lloD’s case though, he was still relatively new to the game, and beating ChuDat was certainly notable by seeding and each of their respective national status. Cyrain/Nintendude follows in similar fashion.
Second Honorable Mentions (And No. 10)
| Major | Result | Upset Factor | PNR | UpsetScore |
| Super Smash Con 2016 | PewPewU over Mew2King | 5 | 2 | 1.58 |
| Super Smash Con | lloD over Duck | 4 | 3 | 1.59 |
| Super Smash Con 2017 | Zain over SFAT | 5 | 2 | 1.59 |
| Super Smash Con 2018 | HiFi over Captain Smuckers | 5 | 2 | 1.59 |
| Super Smash Con 2022 | Khryke over moky | 5 | 2 | 1.59 |
| Super Smash Con 2023 | Fishbait over Chem | 5 | 2 | 1.59 |
| Super Smash Con 2023 | Artan over Preeminent | 5 | 2 | 1.59 |
| Supernova 2024 | Artan over KJH | 4 | 3 | 1.59 |
| Super Smash Con 2019 | ChuDat over Axe | 7 | 3 | 1.72 |
I know what you’re thinking: how can Zain beating SFAT be considered an upset? It’s simple – that was the first time that Zain ever beat him. Although Zain was a rising player, beating SFAT back then, believe it or not, was considered an extremely big achievement in that matchup. SFAT around that time had started to turn the corner on PewPewU and had grown strong enough to take sets from Mew2King.
Artan’s presence on this section, let alone the whole list, surprises me quite a bit. In hindsight though, I think the methodology’s limitations show in both of his inclusions here. Before each of his upsets, he had either been an honorable mention or had finished No. 10 on the New Jersey Power Rankings. Honestly, I think he was extremely underseeded in both of his upsets.
Officially beginning our Top 10 on this list is another slightly overrated result in ChuDat over Axe. ChuDat had beaten him before, and the two had a fairly back-and-forth dynamic. Then again, this was when Axe was fresh off winning a supermajor, while ChuDat was largely considered on the decline. Good thing this is the only time Axe would ever get upset by an Ice Climbers player! More on that later.
Numbers 7 to 9
| Major | Result | Upset Factor | PNR | UpsetScore |
| Super Smash Con 2018 | Jerry over SFAT | 6 | 2 | 2.09 |
| Super Smash Con 2019 | Kevin Maples over SFAT | 5 | 3 | 2.09 |
| Super Smash Con 2016 | Mafia over Axe | 5 | 3 | 2.09 |
A year after losing to Zain in top eight, SFAT would suffer yet another upset; this time at the hands of Jerry, a Top 100 Fox player who switched to Jigglypuff. Why did he do that, you ask? Because he picked up Dragonball FighterZ and wanted an easier character to maintain for Melee. From what I remember, Jerry successfully hit SFAT with Rest seven times in this set. In the process, he also became the first Jigglypuff other than Hungrybox to defeat SFAT from everything I could find.
SFAT’s heartbreak does not end there. At the next Super Smash Con, he had the misfortune of being sent to the losers bracket by yet another local player in Kevin Maples. At the time, Kevin Maples had never made the Top 100 and was somewhat of a hidden boss within MD/VA. Come to think of it, he was dominant against his peers in eerily similar fashion to now, only he didn’t have a top win at a national.
Although Mafia never quite broke through Crush as a regional obstacle, he achieved a ton of big wins at majors, the biggest of which came in him beating Axe, then a Top 10 player, at Super Smash Con 2016. We will discuss Axe later; for now, this was a very big surprise, as Axe practically never lost to a Peach that wasn’t Armada or MacD. Mafia ended up finishing No. 50 for 2016 SSBMRank in large part because of this win. Obviously, what happened afterward is a whole other can of worms that this column is nowhere near the place to explain in detail.
Tied for Top 5
| Major | Result | Upset Factor | PNR | UpsetScore |
| Super Smash Con 2018 | 42nd over SFAT | 6 | 4 | 3.09 |
| Super Smash Con 2016 | ESAM over Westballz | 7 | 3 | 3.09 |
There’s no getting around the fact that Super Smash Con just wasn’t SFAT’s tournament series. The same event where Jerry became the first Jigglypuff other than Hungrybox to beat SFAT, 42nd promptly joined him in a stunning takedown that eliminated SFAT from the event at 33rd place. While 42nd was a strong Top 100 ballot-contending player for that year, this win came as a total shock. As a result of it, along with his broader rise in Long Island, 42nd would finish at No. 68 on the 2018 MPGR.
ESAM is often remembered as an Ultimate player, as a meme, or as an Ultimate player who randomly fluked an appearance at Smash Summit 2, much to the chagrin of the Melee community. He was really good at Melee though. His win on Westballz was part of a broader stretch of performances from ESAM in which he took down other notable players in the scene, like beating Zhu that same tournament or defeating Wobbles at Low Tier City 4.
Number 4
| Major | Result | Upset Factor | PNR | UpsetScore |
| Super Smash Con 2018 | Flipsy over Mang0 | 7 | 4 | 3.59 |
Dear friend of Melee Stats Alex Lee dubbed this the greatest upset of all-time after it happened. Melee Stats member Melissa Blight legendarily called this result the week before. Is this really such a big upset or was it predictable? I think that this is one of many dominos that led to the eventual Wobbling ban; the long story short was that if your name wasn’t ChuDat, Mang0 just typically bulldozed whatever Ice Climbers player was in front of him. After this upset happened, there were brief cries about Wobbling before the public discourse fizzled.
Number 3
| Major | Result | Upset Factor | PNR | UpsetScore |
| Super Smash Con 2019 | Wisp over Hax | 6 | 6 | 4.09 |
I remember watching this result live – it was both as shocking to watch as it is to evaluate after the fact. Around this time, Hax was not too far off from re-entering his prime and had a couple years to get re-adjusted to playing on a controller. Meanwhile, Wisp was largely a respectable 3-2’r in his region, and not anywhere close to winning the MD/VA Arcadian. When these two players played, and with respect to Wisp as a competitor, it truly took every single break to go in Wisp’s way for it to end up in his favor. A series of random SDs, lucky Peach downsmashes, and some clutch play eventually brought Wips the victory. To date, Wisp is the lowest seeded player to ever beat a Top 15 seed in Supernova history.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Wisp actually did get second at the MD/VA Arcadian a year before this set; I completely missed it in my research. Sincerely, my bad. I still think this is a huge upset, but probably should be a bit lower.
Number 2
| Major | Result | Upset Factor | PNR | UpsetScore |
| Super Smash Con 2022 | Wally over Zain | 10 | 4 | 5.09 |
Wally over Zain is undeniably a massive upset. On the surface, you may wonder why it’s not number one on this list; it features a nationally unranked player taking down the unofficial best player at the event. But honestly, I think the No. 2 spot isn’t quite fair. UpsetFactor slightly overplays the level of upset at hand; Wally entered this event extremely underseeded and also as a late registrant. Zain was also not nearly considered untouchable vs. the field. While largely consistent, he had already suffered losses to aMSa and SluG the month before this tournament and hadn’t won a major in a few attempts. Obviously this is still an amazing result, but the one set above it correctly earned its spot, and I’d have it a little lower.
Number 1
| Major | Result | Upset Factor | PNR | UpsetScore |
| Super Smash Con 2019 | PudgyPanda over Axe | 11 | 5 | 6.09 |
There was no doubt in my mind that this upset would be at the top of the list. As a 70 seed taking down a 2 seed, it’s practically perfect fodder for the “Upset Factor” metric and comparable to when BING beat Cody Schwab. And unlike Wally over Zain, I don’t think there’s any stipulations behind the seeding here either. Furthermore, PudgyPanda was near the top of the New Jersey Power Rankings, while Axe had won a major not too long before this result. There is a large difference between being regionally ranked and being one of the greatest players of all-time.
It’s tempting to retroactively claim that this upset wasn’t too surprising. In fact, at the time, I remember this being a call that people within Melee Stats made before the event, with the logic being that Axe had always struggled with the Ice Climbers. But in all honesty, there was no precedent for anyone to confidently believe that Axe was likely to lose against PudgyPanda. In preparation for this column, I used Liquipedia to examine Axe’s head-to-head history against every single Top 100 Ice Climbers player from 2013 to right before Super Smash Con 2019.
| Opponent | Axe H2H |
| Wobbles | 8-3 |
| Fly Amanita | 1-3 |
| Nintendude | 1-1 |
| ChuDat | 1-2 |
| dizzkidboogie | 2-0 |
| ARMY | 1-3 |
| Trail | 1-0 |
| InfiniteNumbers | 1-0 |
| Boyd | 1-0 |
| Bananas | 1-3 |
| Sharkz | 2-0 |
| Cumulative vs. Top 50 ICs | 14-19 |
| Cumulative vs. Top 51-100 ICs | 5-0 |
| Cumulative vs. All Top ICs | 19-19 |
Axe is undeniably weak against the Ice Climbers – but it’s usually when playing a peer in the Top 50. Every single data point we have otherwise, though it’s admittedly quite low, points to him easily skill gapping other top Ice Climbers players in this same matchup. Starting with Apex 2013, I then looked through Axe’s entire set history log up until Super Smash Con 2019. Noting Ice Climbers players who were roughly comparable to Pudgy on a regional basis, I found that he had defeated each of Glitch (twice) and Fork. While I would not go as far as to say that it proves Axe to be an insurmountable mountain against a borderline Top 100 Ice Climbers player, there had never been an upset like this to happen versus him.
Ironically, you could find something far closer to this for Axe vs. Fox. Remember when R2DLiu beat him at The Big House 6? Or when No. 97 Panda beat him at Genesis 7? How about Riptide, where Colorado hidden boss Secrets defeated Axe? These are amazing results, but it’s not like the world watched and bit their collective fingernails every time Axe played a Top 100 Fox. Instead, these results were properly assessed in context as amazing precisely because we know that Axe overwhelmingly trounces this same group of players. Meanwhile, the only Ice Climbers to defeat him since Super Smash Con 2019 are ARMY and Nicki. SluG, Trail, Fluid, Lunar Dusk, JJM, Watch, Frostbyte – all of them lost in each of their chances over the last six years.
Of course, we all know a large reason shaping Axe’s recent success against the Ice Climbers: the fact that Wobbling is now banned. There are very few moments in the history of Melee that forced community leadership to examine competitive legitimacy, and I am totally convinced that this was one of them. It may not have been immediately afterward. It may have been preceded by other Wobbling-related upsets. It may even have taken some time, as well as a few extenuating factors like the pandemic. But what greater moment of community-reflection could there possibly be on the rule set than an unranked Ice Climbers player defeating a recent entrant into the major pantheon?
As community members, we are far more than what people immediately notice in the public eye. PudgyPanda was a good New Jersey player who had been improving his results well before beating Axe; in fact, he beat Chillin the round before and had achieved wins over Ice Climbers-slayers like MikeHaze and Kaeon. After defeating Axe, he outwardly said that the result shouldn’t count against Axe for rankings because the matchup was simply that bad. I can’t think of a more fitting response from the winner of the greatest upset in Supernova history: the one underdog whose win practically made us change the rules to ensure it never happened again.